XBMC 12 Beta Now Live, Brings Several Improvements

A new version of XBMC recently became available on the developer’s website. After eight months, XBMC version 12 “Frodo” is now in beta, and it brings several improvements over previous iterations of the media center software.

The XBMC 12 beta is available to download for Windows, Linux, OSX, Raspberry Pi, iOS, and AppleTV2. The beta is also rolled into a customized Ubuntu-based Linux distribution called XBMCbuntu which comes as an .iso image download. New features in the XBMC beta include:

HD audio support via the new XBMC AudioEngine:

DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD

Live TV and PVR support

h.264 10bit (aka Hi10P) video software for decoding anime

64-bit version for OSX

Improved image support and additional formats

Raspberry Pi support

Initial Android platform support

Improved Airplay support across all platforms

Advanced Filtering in the library

Advanced UPnP sharing

Translations now powered by Transifex

In addition, the user interface and software startup feels snappier from my informal testing. After loading up my video and music folders, it worked without issues or crashes. XBMC does note that this is still beta software, so it is not advisable to use in a production environment. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to try out the live TV functionality.